15: Just Alerting You

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Just Alerting You

Original title: Just Alerting You (Monday's drawing)

Title text: Just thought you should know Original caption: I bet she's cool. I mean, she has a dinosaur! I'm gonna update this MWF for a while and see how that works.

Explanation

This was the fourteenth comic originally posted to LiveJournal. The previous one was 11: Barrel - Part 2, and the next one was 16: Monty Python -- Enough. It was the first comic posted to LiveJournal after the first thirteen xkcd comics were released.

In this comic, a man is riding a Brontosaurus (or what would later be referred to as an Apatosaurus). The humor lies in the fact that the man feels the need to highlight their peculiarity, despite the obvious oddity of riding an extinct and dangerous creature. Megan would later ride an Apatosaurus in 650: Nowhere. This dinosaur genus is also mentioned in 460: Paleontology and 636: Brontosaurus. This was the first comic with dinosaurs, but since then, there have been numerous comics about them on xkcd.

The title text further emphasizes this, while the original caption signifies that Randall would start posting a new comic every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Ironically enough, this comic was posted on a Sunday, a few minutes before Monday: see the trivia section. From now, he also began putting the date into most, but not all, comic titles on LiveJournal until he started to use xkcd.com instead.

Transcript

[A man is standing on the back of a green dinosaur and holding reins to the dinosaur's head.]

Man: Before you talk to me, I should warn you: I am kind of strange

Trivia

This was the first comic to be released on a Sunday. It was released only 17 minutes before midnight at 11:43 PM.

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Discussion

I think you mean an Apatosaurus. See xkcd 636 for the difference.

The comic is funny because she is telling you she is strange but it should have been very ovious that she is strange because while most people travel by car or walking she rides a dinosaur which is not very common. Unsigned comment added by 72.38.90.50.

She could be telling the dinosaur that she's strange. OTOH, since she seems to be riding it, she probably isn't introducing herself to it. gijobarts (talk) 00:56, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

She must be Eve.22:26, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

As of 2015 it is now generally accepted that Brontosaurus was a valid genus in its own right, separate and distinct from Apatosaurus. Given that Brontosaurus has long been more popular than Apatosaurus, perhaps the explanation should be updated to stated that Megan(?) is riding a Brontosaurus. 108.162.249.183 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Good point, and the official transcript suggests that it is a Brontosaurus, so replacing the comment about it being a former name.

Is the incomplete tag really necessary? "Short" and "incomplete" are two different things. There is not really much to this comic - a single figure riding a dinosaur with some simple caption that does to contain any technical stuff or obscure references that'd need explaining. I think it is neither needed nor desirable to make the explanation longer for sake of being longer. If someone feels like this page is legitimately incomplete, feel free to add the tag back, with a better text pointing out to specific areas that need to be explained, not just "too short". Jaalenja (talk) 10:46, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Am I the only one who thought Star Wars Christmas Special? Boba Fett? Netherin5 (talk) 13:55, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

From the Trivia: "This may have made people think that this was Megan but as stated above Randall says this is a man in the transcript." Yeah, but he also says, "I bet she's cool. I mean, she has a dinosaur!" So…maybe it is Megan.--Calion (talk) 23:00, 18 February 2023 (UTC)